Larsen and Toubro Current Affairs - 2019

Chief Minister of Goa Manohar Parrikar inaugurated the “Atal Setu” on the Mandovi river in Goa.

Key features of the Bridge

The important features of the bridge are:

It is a four-lane 5.1-km long cable-stayed bridge connects state capital Panaji with north Goa.

This four-lane bridge weighs at 2.5 lakh tonnes is equivalent to the weight of 570 Boeing aircraft.

The bridge has been built by 1 lakh cubic metres of high strength, high performance concrete enough to fill 40 Olympic size swimming pools.

13,000 tonnes of corrosion resistant reinforcement steel, 32,000 square metres of structural steel plates and 1,800 kilometres of high tensile pre-stressing strands have gone into making the bridge.

The bridge utilizes 88 high tensile strength cables in the state-of-art single place harp type cable stay system and a real-time force monitoring mechanism.

The bridge is constructed by the GIDC (Goa Infrastructure Development Corporation) in collaboration with construction major Larsen and Toubro.

River Mandovi

River Mandovi, also known as Mahadayi or Mhadei river is regarded as the lifeline of Goa. The river originates from a cluster of 30 springs at Bhimgad in the Western Ghats in the Belagavi district of Karnataka and has a total 2,032 km2 catchment area of which 1,580 km2, 375 km2 and 77 km2 catchment area are in Goa, Karnataka and Maharashtra respectively. Owing to the differences over the sharing of the river water among the states of Goa, Karnataka and Maharashtra, the union government has constituted Mahadayi Water Disputes Tribunal to examine the claims made by the states.

Union Government has appointed Anil Manibhai Naik as Chairman of National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC). He is currently Group Chairman of engineering conglomerate Larsen and Toubro (L&T). He was awarded Padma Bhushan, India’s 3rd highest civilian award in 2009 for his outstanding contribution to economic growth of the country.

National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC)

NSDC is Public Private Partnership (PPP) under Ministry of Skill Development & Entrepreneurship (MSDE). It was founded in 2009 as not-for-profit company by Ministry of Finance to address need for providing skilled manpower across various industry sectors. Government of India (GoI) through MSDE holds 49% of share capital of NSDC, while private sector has balance 51% of the share capital. NSDC aims to promote skill development by catalyzing creation of large, quality and for-profit vocational institutions. Its objective is to create training capacity in the country; fund vocational training initiatives and create market ecosystem for skill development. Its mandate is to train 150 million people by 2022. It is also involved in re-skilling and also in catering to skilled manpower requirement of overseas markets, most notably that of Japan (under TITP) and UAE.